This man, who was offering it to her.
“He wouldn’t like it,” she whispered.
“No, he wouldn’t.” His fingertips a lick of heat following their path as they stroked along her jaw, down the edge of her neck to where her shoulder gave way to the hollow of her throat. “How did I fail to see it before?”
The words echoed the caress, soft and tempting, and her breath caught there, beneath his fingers, as they retraced their path up the column of her neck and tilted her face to his. She watched his beautiful mouth as he spoke. “How did I not notice it? The scent of you? The curve of your lips? The line of your neck?” He paused, and leaned in close, his mouth a hairsbreadth from hers. “How many years have I watched you?”
Good Lord, he was going to kiss her.
She wanted him to kiss her.
“If I were him,” he whispered, so close, so quiet that she fairly ached in anticipation, “I would not be happy at all.”
If he were whom? The question formed and dissipated in an instant, like opium smoke, taking thought with it. He was drugging her with words and looks and touch.
This was why she stayed clear of men.
But just once, just this time, she wanted it.
“If I were him,” he continued, his thumb stroking high across her cheek as he cupped her head and brought her to him. “I wouldn’t let you go. I would keep you. My lady.”
She froze at the words, fear and panic threading through her. She looked up at him, finding his clear, intelligent gaze. “You know.”
“I know,” he said. “But what I do not understand is why?”
He did not know everything. He did not understand the life that she had chosen was not Anna, but Chase. Not the lightskirt, but the king.
She told the truth. “Power.”
His gaze narrowed. “Over whom?”
“Over everyone,” she said, simply. “I own my life. Not them. They think me a whore, why not play one?”
“Under their noses.”
She smiled. “They see only what they wish to. It’s a beautiful thing.”
“I saw you.”
She shook her head. “Not for years. You thought I was Anna, too.”
“You could own your life beyond these walls,” he argued. “You do not have to play this part.”
“But I like this part. Here, I am free. It is Georgiana who must scrape and bow and beg for acceptance. Here, I take what I want. Here, I am beholden to none.”
“None but your master.”
Except she was the master. She did not reply.
He misread the silence. “That’s why you seek a husband. What happened?” he asked. “Has Chase tossed you aside?”
She pulled away from him, needing the distance between them to return her sanity. To take her next steps. To craft her careful lies. “He hasn’t tossed me aside.”
His brows snapped together. “He cannot expect your husband to share you.”
The words stung, even as they should not. She’d lived all of this life in the shadows of The Fallen Angel masquerading as a whore. She’d convinced hundreds of London’s aristocrats that she was an expert in pleasure. That she’d sold herself to their most powerful leader. She dressed the part, with heaving bosom and painted face. She’d taught herself to move, to act, to be the part.
And somehow, when this man acknowledged the reputation she had worked so hard to cultivate, the façade she had built with care and conviction, she hated it. Perhaps it was because he knew more of her truth than most, and still, he believed the lies.
Or perhaps it was because he made her wish she did not have the lies to tell.
No. She was falling victim to the hero in him, to the way he’d leapt to her aid only minutes earlier.
She caught her breath at the thought.
Only once he knew the truth. Her other identity. Her other life.
Anger flared alongside disappointment and something akin to shame. “You wouldn’t have saved me.”
It took him a moment to follow the change in topic. “I —”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said, one hand flying up as if to stop the words on his lips. “Don’t insult me.”
“I came after Pottle,” he said, raising his own hand, brandishing knuckles that would be sore in the morning. “I did save you.”
“Because you knew the truth of my birth. If I’d been Anna alone… just a woman with a centuries-old profession. Just a painted whore —”
He stopped her. “Don’t speak like that.”
“Oh,” she scoffed. “Do I offend?”
He ran his bruised hand through blond locks. “Christ, Georgiana.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He laughed, the sound humorless. “What should I call you? Anna? A false name to go with your false hair and your false face and your false…” He trailed off, one hand indicating her bodice, padded and cinched to make her ordinary bosom look extraordinary.
“I am not certain that you should call me anything at this point,” she said, and she meant it.
“It is too late for that. We are together in this. Bound by word and greed.”
“I think you mean deed.”
“I know precisely what I mean.”
They faced each other in the dim light, and Georgiana could sense his anger and frustration, matched by her own. How strange was this moment? Born of his protection of one half of her because of the existence of the other?
It was mad. A wicked web that could not be unwoven.
At least, not without ruining everything for which she’d worked.